Amp It Up

16Swing for the Fences—the Snowflake Growth Story

Plan the Next Shift Before You Think You Need To

When I joined Snowflake in April 2019, it faced significant operational challenges but also tremendous opportunities. In this third case study of strategic transformation, I will review how the company evolved from its initial positioning to the more expansive trajectory we subsequently embarked on. We've seen how important it was for both Data Domain and ServiceNow to expand their addressable markets; Snowflake faced a similar challenge, just in the context of different issues and circumstances.

I arrived thinking that we had plenty of time to prepare for the future because the company was experiencing robust growth. But as time unfolded, it became clear that the strategic moves we started making early on weren't merely getting a jump on future opportunities. They were actually barely in time and far more essential than I'd realized.

This illustrates an axiom of strategy development: you need to think well ahead of the current dynamic in your market. If you wait until the need for a strategic shift becomes overwhelmingly evident, you may be too late to address it. Anticipating how markets—and your position in them—will evolve is absolutely essential. Nothing stays the same, even when you do nothing. Taking comfort in a favorable status quo may prevent you from ever moving significantly forward.

“The Data Warehouse Built for the Cloud”

Snowflake's original positioning, when ...